Shortwave: The Warlord's Radio 

Most people just need to understand that 99% of the usefulness of a radio of any kind is intelligence and information gathering. Gathering. Meaning just listening. Not much of a need to key that mic in a lot of situations. Just like the other parts of life, you are way better off listening than you are talking. Every time you key that mic you are putting a target on your back.

“Channel your inner warlord” should be daily advice

This is a great presentation. I am glad somebody is actually explaining Radio Communications instead of trying to sell an $800 handheld radio. In my opinion, 99% of the ham radio videos on RU-vid are for operators who already "know" a lot about ham radio. This is why non-hams watch those videos and they cant comprehend a single word those people are saying. I think this channel has the great potential to change the future of ham radio.

I know nothing about ham radio. I did spend years training in the military immediately post cold war. The training I've received regarding radios over the years was significant. We hung antennas in trees, set em up on poles, mounted them to vehicles, etc. Training under soviet threat doctrine we moved a lot. With the tech the soviets had back in the day they could triangulate a radio operators position in seconds. Field artillery, jamming, and what have you could be targeted on that position in seconds to minutes. Shoot, move, and communicate was the order of the day. Since then I've also deployed to various theaters overseas. Technology has changed significantly in just 20+ years. I've been out for in excess of 10 now. Our guys could, and did listen to all the transmissions sent out by the militant groups in our area. The only real protections modern insurgent groups really have imo is the amount of resources they'll have available to devote in your direction. The amount of movement you can do, and how fast, etc. You could string your own landlines in fixed positions. These can't be intercepted as far as I'm aware. Use directional antennas. You can find out how to make these in publically available field manuals. Those are harder to detect. Use preset locations where your antennas are setup using materials your prepared to abandon. Roll in, hook up antenna, send message, grab radio, go. Leave antenna. Don't communicate at all for long periods. Use lots of keywords in voice communications. Use every tech advantage you got to shorten your communications. Your ideas on sending txt or pictures is great. Pictures not as much. Its the 21st century, could you use drones as repeater stations? Send it up, burst your message, grab drone, go. Use existing infrastructure, tap into existing phone lines strung out for miles already. If there is no power that's another option for communications with improvised, or surplus field phones. Depending upon the state of urban areas, there could be plenty of camouflage, cover, and concealment available there. Use, or modify existing power lines, or phone lines for house to house communication, op (observation post), etc. The imagination goes on, and on. By the time we've got abandoned urban areas, and can freely utilize existing infrastructure there's gonna be a lot of unprepared dead people, and the survivors probably won't need my advice, or will have forgotten it. Also anything a person can wargame in their mind can be countered by an equally imaginative opponent, and you really cannot plan what happens when shtf. Every scenario you've imagined with the aid of your 10 besties will be different than you imagined. After the 1st shot, rocket, zombie attack happens its all adlib with the resources you and your theoretical demonic enemy have to throw at each other. The one thing I hated about using radios in mountainous terrain was how the mountains themselves severely limited your commo. You couldn't talk to the guy a half kilometer away, but you and the guy 20 klicks away could talk all day. If your in an area where your antenna can talk to anyone your also in a spot that's got great line of sight to all bad guys and field artillery. So you try to hide in the valleys where they have to use high quadrant elevation to drop things on you, but move your antennas as far away as is possible with as much cammo as you can do. Mountains just suck, and after you've been climbing up and down and running around for an entire week with no sleep there's no amount of physical fitness in the world that seems adequate.

I am a very experienced long distance hiker/backpacker who spends most of my time in Appalachian mountains, far more then 10,000 miles of back-country travel, there are very very few humans who could carry 100 lbs 12 miles in a day while bush whacking up and down mountains, i couldn't, on a trail sure but not truely bushwhacking. the difference between walking 20 miles down a road or even trail and walking 5 in the back country will blow minds, this spring i took a been there done that army ranger with me for a hike, on trail was fine but when i took him on a bushwhack for about a mile he said it was the hardest thing he had ever done. every yuear i challenge myself to bushwhack a new peak that trails do not reach and every year I am amazed at how hard it is, how sketchy travel without a path can be, how hard it is to get gear through the thickest and steepest of terrain

Note @ 7:27 - "The knock on the door for being a HAM" That happened during WW-II. Although HAMs were tolerated for training Morse code radiomen, they were shut down during world war two. Many call signs were lost and old timers were given new call signs. Also, Some cities in California now want HAM to pay to co-locate antennas. Two local Emergency operations managers have come back with "The after hurricane report from Florida opened with "We did not think we needed HAM operators since we have cell phones, mobile data and Starlink satellites. We were wrong. We needed too many people in too many places. HAMs could travel by bike" NOTE: MARS mods may not be bad. NEVER use a police frequency. I'd rather use a military or GMRS to call for help after a fire, gun shot, explosion. I expect to be prosecuted for using a police freq. NOTE: SDR allows people to see how active a wide band of frequencies. "Waterfall" option can even help spot code vs speach vs FSK. I keep a CB. Why? Its what others have. Use for intel gathering and monitoring. Do not forget NOAA radio & FM to have some music after a long day. Good stress reliver.

Loved the middle earth map for comms scheduling. It was a nice touch.

Depending on your operational area and what your needs are, don’t discount the humble CB radio. If you can get your antenna high enough, they have 10-20 miles of range and don’t require much power. If you’re planning to ally with like minded neighbors, being able to communicate is as easy as making a trip to your local truck stop.

As an unlicensed someone that’s been trying to learn about some of this stuff, from a relatively closed community, THANK YOU for this.

I find shortwave radio's fascinating. I have been interested in them ever since I was 7 years old, just messing around with one. Being able to tune into a station from *thousands* if not *tens of thousands* of kilometers away is still a mind boggling concept even today.

MARS-gram’s were awesome to get while deployed before e-mail was mass available especially in the marines. I didn’t get an email address until 2004!

Hams and Physical Fitness..almost pee'd myself laughing. I can't think of one time where a ham-meetup didn't involve a never-ending buffet of some variety.

We are not all narrow-minded a-holes. Great discussion!

As a fellow ham this is an amazing video. And have been trying to tell people this for years. Comms are super important.

Dude, take this to the next level. Start offering classes. I would pay.

Excellent summary of *useful* information about HF in the current times.

“Let’s see Paul Allen’s SALUTE report” That meme always cracks me up

Discretely gaining practical experience with this in the US is incredibly difficult, since HAM operators will gleefully DF you and rat you out to the enforcers. F'ing collaborators. And yeah, you can get a license for it; but registration is the first step to confiscation. Wouldn't it be better to DX and bounce?

i was a radio operator in the marines. i definitely felt that carrying a PRC on 8 hr patrols daily. GET YOUR BODIES PREPARED GENTS. much more difficult over long distances/rough terrain than you would think.

this is the type of technical information that can really save lives in the future and help our people survive .. may God help good triumph over evil in this world..

Notification squad roll up.

I don't know how it took me so long to discover your channel. I have found a new thing to be obsessed about. Thank you.

This fine video is spot on regarding portable operations in both regular and extreme emergency conditions. I gave up the ham shack thing twenty years ago and and now operate entirely out of my backpack. Features are a 5 to 100 watt radio in all modes, 60 watt solar panel, lifepo4 batteries, and all the finest and smallest accessories. The antenna is a portable 2m to 40 m (144 mhz - 7 mhz) in vertical, horizontal and NVIS configurations. I have operated from many countries and remote locations using this system.

This was one of the best videos I have watched regarding shortwave radio. Bravo and thank you! 73s!

Excellent video as always, and I'm pretty dumb on communications stuff, so this was excellent information for me.

The subject of communications has been on my mind for a few years now. This was the best information I've seen and heard on the subject, by yards. Outstanding. Even though I had enormous gaps in understanding, you kept bringing it back so I could kind of follow along as a new guy. Thanks a lot for that.

I am regularly involved in much of this for emcomm. I was in Navy then Army MARS for several years. I can add to almost everything mentioned here. Let me add one thing... DStar works (and is legal at 6khz bandwidth)on HF. It's not encrypted but also not easily decoded by others and it is freaky clear in HF. Works on NVIS. I have talked to hams from here in PA to Idaho, Florida, Carolinas, etc just as clear as FM VHF . Several radios can do this. Sort of unique as other digital voice modes are too wide to be legal in HF... Assuming you're still abiding by the rules.

This is a hidden gem, with thought provoking concepts… the narrator has strong suggestions of a prior life in the realm of 18E.

I have been working on a Lora meshtastic network in my area for friends and family to communicate , currently it's just for fun but if it's even half set up if things go sideways it could be useful

Excellent schooling once again S2 crew, thank you so much for sharing the craft, awesome stuff.

Man… I hope your friends appreciate the value you bring to the table.

I'm really a fan of making the vehicle a mobile station. I'm new to ham so searching info found you. Its really alarming the state of the world, and with wartime lurking, we really should be considering staying in touch with events.

These "Training" exercises by the Ham Radio community, are played out in contest type environments usually, Like POTA, IOTA, SOTA, Field Day, etc. There's should be a type of "war" type of event organized, these would really get hams out there and planning war or conflict based rules for contests. Select multiple points and place scenarios simulated (Jamming as it's illegal) and real type of challenges. this could be "gamified" and could work. Maybe even like a type of RPG card game, set random situations, etc.

Mesh networking is something that should also be looked into. Long range low bandwidth networks interlacing high bandwidth local nodes is a game changer.

Your channel is amazing. Thanks for all your hard work. The info you put out is top notch

there's A LOT of ground to cover, with regard to even understanding the basics of Radio. times like these make the dummies among us, wish we'd paid more attention, when it's was easier to comprehend.

If you can send messages, you can send encrypted messages... You just need to do it manually through a secondary app.

You paint people interested in radio with a Broad Brush. But your Explanation of radio is the Easiest I have found. Best Wishes! M.H.

Best video I’ve seen in a long time , explained perfect , I’m going to share with family and friends ! You rock !

Top notch content per usual! Ty so much. Send all of these updates to my peeps! 💚

This escalated quickly! Too much to learn

You should do a video on logistics, like how to set up so that you will have food etc. If you are running around in the hills, you gotta have a way to feed yourself while hunted.

Your presentation skills are really good, the way that you structure and laid out the topic is very academic.

I’m not sure which is more impressive; the presentation composition, or that smooth ass outro. Thanks again to the entire team.

Tbh, I get the notifications here so I can go watch on lbry. Seems worth it to say that in a video about comms.

would love to see more outdoor appropriate, manpack, non-chinese type radios on the ham market that are more affordable than some of the Codan/Harris/Barrett/Thales options

thank you very much for this video! it was a bit too late for me since it searched around for years and spend hundreds of hours trying different things and modes. you confirmed alot of things i discovered by myself.

Amazingly well put together presentation. Shared heavily.

@S2 Underground, MARS volunteers during the Vietnam War would connect US Soldiers in Vietnam with their families in the states for personal communication.

Familiar broll I saw in there 😜 Good video. I think there were some criticisms that didn’t account for the realities in say military comms. Most aren’t running high speed/low-drag hf and the sat comm systems requires massive crew to staff. All the recommendations you gave on modes was great though. The 705 in particular with the image transmission is valuable once you tether to a phone for image transfer for sending. I didn’t hear you mention encoded words and one time pads? The most simple and brute force encryption methods that done require special gear.

Excellent! We’ll prepared and presented. Thanks for all your effort on this.

Once again appreciate the work you guys do

Ham Radio Outlet will professionally MARS mod any new radio you buy for $30. You void the manufacturers warranty but who cares. You can participate in natl guard civillian radio checks too. They have back ups for their backups for their backups. Learn from their training be part of a solution yours, theirs, ours.

This is an amazing video and I'm glad I found this channel

WOW I need to get a radio. I didn't know about all this stuff, and the things it lets you do seem pretty amazing. Especially the picture transmitting and just the thought of being able to send things out

This video is pure gold. The type of information I wanted since I started this hobbie 3 months ago. As an electronic engineer always wanted to learn more about those long range communications. Here in Colombia in the 90s always was curious how the communications of FARC guerrilla were so fluid all about this full of mountains country. Army still didn’t have any digital comms system and they were listening one to each other all the time.

I'm a Canadian HAM with a strong interest in off-grid comms. I appreciate your video because it touches on a range of important topics which are ear and dear to me. In a world of media censorship the so-called knock on the door scenario is less theoretical than I suspect most HAM's understand. The ability of the government to change the rule in a heartbeat was recently demonstrated when the government of Canada enacted the Emergency Act to quell the Canadian Truckers protest. This single demonstration of government power not only provided a clear illustration of how quickly the amateur radio operating environment can change but also how the population can become divided in their opinions on a single issue. Fear and propaganda are used in a variety of ways to turn friends against each other in a divide and conquer campaign. Today's amateur radio hobbyists may be tomorrow's enemy of the state virtually overnight. It is impossible to say who can you really trust without sounding paranoid but it is now the central question to ask when considering the kinds of operating you discuss. Adherents to the rule book will first to report anyone they deem to be an enemy operative after the hammer falls on legal comms. To borrow a well trodden phrase, keeps your friends close and your enemies closer when considering off-grid comms. After all comms gear is only the smallest part of a much larger equation. Thanks for bringing all this into shaper focus. It is a very important topic.

As a extra class operator, this was a great video. Thank you

Thanks for the awesome video. Great topic, imagery, commentary and object theorizing.

Got to love this channel, it's none stop full of information 🙂

Remember, FIGHT IN THE SHADE.

Dave Canterberry has recently taken up the ham qrp ops. Good vids.

After your ghost network video, I decided to buy an icom-705 and then found this video trying to learn about it. Super awesome info in this, thank you amigo.

Awesome video as always, informative, interesting and educational. Thankyou, the comments section here is fantastic too. All the best for everyone

S2, what I've learned since the Covid Atrocity, is that knowing a lot yourself is only one part. The other part is the ability to teach others and bring them to a level of competence. Thank you for everything you and the S2 Underground are doing.

I've been a ham radio operator for 3 years I've mainly focused on uhf,vhf ptt and 40 meter tap tap tap all things I've tried in this vain has been very difficult with very little information or help to be found. The closest thing I have found close to what your talking about is packet radio not ideal but works well after you put the reps in to figure it out the concepts and hard ware you just mentioned are new to me I would definitely like to learn more about it I guess I'm going to have to rewatch this video so I can take notes to make research easier thank you for the information

a seriously underappreciated in-development thing is Reticulum, which can work over radio, or anything else

Excellent video. Being an amateur operator myself, it's nice to see a video highlighting issues and current strengths of shortwave communication and the amateur radio side. In the Army I repair tactical ground radios (I.E. Manpacks, vehicle amplifiers, and other tactical radios), these radios have frequency ranges that are, for the RT-1523 series, between 30.000-87.975 MHz. MARS modification would allow amateurs or really anybody that would need to, the ability to communicate with military forces in an emergency or otherwise warfare situation. The RT-1523 radio transmitter only has a high power output of ~5W and that limits how far your signal can actually propagate and be heard from. Even with this, the ability to transmit on every frequency your transceiver is designed for is extremely helpful in an emergency I would say. The amateur radio portions of the bands allocated by the FCC are always filled and I think during an emergency they'd be lit up hotter than on Field Day. Having the extra space to transmit outside of the current bands would allow for easier communication, data transmission, and operational planning to be carried out more efficiently.

Been a ham for 30 years. Never thought about domestic wartime, on the run comms, and I should have before now. Thanks.

I love this stuff!

S2 UNDERGROUND - this is great material. Perhaps a join option to keep you funded doing your work?

Another amazing video. Got a sdr scanner and am looking at hf radios now.

Id love to have my own commo guy again, jeez its always been so overwhelming to get my head around the deep side of this fn magic. Thanks excellent overview again.

They can't knock at your door if you never transmit from your home.

Awesome presentation. Thank you.

Inspiring stuff brother! Ive been learning alot about radio, its somewhat confusing but you make it much easier and its quite a fun hobby. Hopefully we won't need it in an apocalypse scenario but it will be useful either way and of course we should be prepared to weather any storms. Ill be setup for Ghostnet this week.

The National Traffic System operates almost all day passing radiograms. MARS is almost always represented.

I’ve tried to get the wife and kid onboard with ham radios in case we get screwed by a hurricane as we live in west Florida. Both of them aren’t interested in learning it for right now. I actually tried GoTenna, and it was okay in the line of sight coms. I finally broke down and got myself a Garmin Inreach explorer plus and pay for a few satellite messages a month and free quick replies. I think if you are in public safety and need to stay in touch no matter what-just use the Garmin. Now I have to get wife and kid the Inreach minis. Clicks and clans can use cheap Beofangs. I wish we could hide somehow in Florida too. It’s hot and nowhere to escape.

Fantastic content and analysis man. Subbed

Thanks for these very helpful updates.

Lmao love the map of middle earth. Its not exactly lore friendly but still better than Amazon's new show.

Shortwave is the only feasible technology for the long distance communication for thousands of kms or tens of thousands of Km without any relay stations, which is available to human beings.Internet heavily relies on relay station, such as cables or satelites.

Last time I heard a TTY signal (FSK modulation) was 1990. It were news agencies broadcasting flash news. And it required a radio with SSB, a TTY decoder that I built, and a computer to display the text. And it was at the incredible speed of 75 baud! When I begun, I used a single 12AX7 in superreactive circuit that receive and transmit at the same time. HF Comms properly made require lot of experience and knowledge of antenna theory. In the wild, an antenna tuner and a miniature wind power generator are worth their weight in gold...

Excellent information. Another great video!

Remember in Doctor Strangelove when the military is told to confiscate all the HAM radios? I remember

Encryption of text can be done using software like GPG, then sent on most data modes. Illegal under normal circumstances but technically possible.

Good timing, I just ordered a radio recently

Highly valuable stuff right here. Thanks.

I'm thinking IR protection would be a serious consideration if one wants to avoid detection, along with sigsec, opsec, camo, etc.

There is a difference between encryption and encoding. The FCC regulates against encryption for civilian communications, and frowns on encoding for civilian communications. Encoding is using a codebook to translate certain phrases between clear form and code form. The codes could be ordinary phrases that mean something very different as specified in the shared codebook. Such as "Ham and eggs" actually means "The attack begins at dusk".

Mentioned before, and it is 70 plus years old experience, but WWII Australian Coast Watchers we’re the gold standard of radio reconnaissance for many years. Including many of the concerns, and precautions mentioned here: radio detection,constant movement,equipment weight ect. Lonely Vigil by Walter Lord is an excellent book which goes into all aspects.⚓️

Excellent video. Thank you.

I think you make a good point - make the comms fit the need, not just have comms and think it will be appropriate to what needs to get done.

Hey S2, I'd like to join the HF community, but it's so full of... old fudds that share not a single goal with me. what do you recommend for younger people like us to get started? I'm interested in unconventional radio experimentations.

Love your of topic excursions to explain stuff! I live in the "3rd world" and appreciate your all encompassing, uplifting message for all !

Best of the best. Thank you!

Clarification: EXTREMELY ERRATIC MOBILITY is a defense. Mobility alone just means you moving to an ambush.

well,' heading for the hills.'..may be a thing of the past. You would be surprised how little space there is left to 'bug out ' to, maybe hiding in plain sight is an alternative?

Man, you are a wealth of information. I am gearing up to get into HAM, but I find it a little daunting on what equipment to buy and where to start. I'll figure it out...

I can't remember the name of it, but there was a book about the history of the Vietnam Era comms and the challenges accordingly.. There were definitely high end (like microwave links) and specialty radio gear but what was striking was a lot of it was done with basic Collins sets like KWM2s. What was also striking was they used as many scraps of spectrum as they could and scheduled heavily, just because they had so much traffic. You mentioned antennas. Likely a good follow up video there. Something I'll say as a thought is that good coax is worth the money over cheap stuff, you'll end up with a lot better